Notable Quotables - 05/25/1992

Published: 5/25/1992 12:00 AM ET

Advisory: Any
Criticism of Liberals Is Racial Politics

"Senator, you told
Tim that you thought the White House suggestion that the Great Society
programs were to blame for what happened in Los Angeles was ludicrous. Was it
also a racial code word - a code word to appeal to racial fears? Is it the
Willie Horton of the 1992 campaign?"
- NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell interviewing Sen. Bill Bradley on Meet the
Press, May 10.

Time
vs. the West

"NATURE HAS A CURE
FOR EVERYTHING, EXCEPT THE SPREAD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION. Until recently,
cultural genocide has been a quietly accepted practice. But times change and
so does TIME."
- Time advertisement in the April 27 Sports Illustrated
promoting their "Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge" issue.

Blaming the
Great Society?

Bush Links Rioting to
60's Policy
- Washington Post, May 7

Bush retreats from blast
at Great Society
- Boston Globe, same day

Reagan's War on
the Poor

"[Bush] also said
he will ask Congress for immediate action that would create a zero capital
gains rate for people who invest in the inner city. But that Bush tax cut may
be just another version of trickle-down Reaganomics, where not enough trickles
down from rich to poor."
- CNN reporter Mary Tillotson on Inside Politics, May 8.

"It was often said
that Ronald Reagan's big budget cuts declared war on the poor. The most that
can be said of George Bush is that he declared a cease-fire."
- NBC reporter Lisa Myers, May 7 Nightly News.

Frying The
Seven Fat Years

"A paean to
Reaganomics that glosses over the excesses and inequities of the Reagan
era....the rising tide of '80s-style growth failed to lift all boats as
advertised: the rich got bigger yachts, the middle class foundered, and many
of the poor went under. The task for the 1990s will be to move beyond the
excesses and inequities of the debt decade rather than strive to return to a
Golden Age that never existed."
- Time Senior Writer John Greenwald reviewing Wall Street
Journal editorial page editor Robert Bartley's book on Reaganomics,
The Seven Fat Years, May 25 issue.

"Remember the
1980s? The decade of Ronald Reagan's presidency is already receding into
history as a second Gilded Age - a time when, amid prosperity, many Americans
became worse off."
- Newsweek economics reporter Marc Levinson on the same book, May 4.

Shoot Them

"Since, as you say,
you're just musing here - if you were President of the United States, what
would you do about Los Angeles, about these problems? Be honest."
- Anchor Garrick Utley interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev, May 16 NBC Nightly
News.

Another Media
Vote for Bill Clinton

"I'll vote for Bill
Clinton in the District of Columbia primary on May 5. I agree with those who
say he could be a very good President. Better than any of his Democratic
opponents. Better than Bush or Perot. On the issues, he'll more than `do' -
he's almost a neoliberal's dream....many pro-Clinton journalists can
reasonably hope for something more than glamorous candlelight dinners in the
Clinton White House. They can hope for jobs in the Clinton White House. The
air is thick with undisclosed ambition.. let's just say that the positions of
press secretary and speech-writer to President Clinton will be among the more
hotly contested job opportunities to come along."
- Former Newsweek reporter Mickey Kaus in The New Republic,
May 11.

Newsweek
on the Cities

"We hold
accountable Republicans who have savaged our urban schools, our housing, our
health care, our social services. We hold accountable Democrats who have
collaborated in this butchery...We hold accountable those who waste our
billions on a military with no enemy to fight."
- Osborn Elliott, Newsweek editor-in-chief from 1961-76, in his
speech as co-chairman of the "Save Our Cities" rally, May 16.

More on Willie
Horton

"The Republicans,
for 25 years, have seldom avoided the temptation to play the race card
politically in this country. It goes back to the '60s, when Richard Nixon ran
as a law-and-order President. In the '70s, Ronald Reagan, and the late '70s,
he ran for President in 1980 talking about welfare queens, associating the
Great Society programs with minorities, and with waste, and with crime in the
streets. There has been a consistent impulse, Willie Horton was just a
continuation of that, to use this issue to divide people."
- U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Steven Roberts on Washington
Week in Review, May 8.

"`I don't think
we've come very far at all,' said Ben Chaney, who is black. His brother James
was among three civil rights workers killed in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan
in 1964. `There's been a lot of changes but hey, where the hell is the
progress?' It's a question that many are asking in these days of Willie
Horton, David Duke, and backlash against affirmative action. It's a question
that in 1992 still begs an answer."
- USA Today reporter Andrea Stone, May 1.

"Good morning
America. The inevitable legacy of the Bush and Reagan years has announced
itself in Los Angeles....There is a direct connection between the moral
vacuity and coy racism of the Willie Horton President and the verdict of the
Simi Valley jury. There is a cause and effect relationship between the greed
and indifference of the voodoo-economics presidencies - both of them - and
the accelerating disintegration of life in the cities that has fueled violent
protest and mindless crime."
- Boston Globe editorial writer Randolph Ryan, May 3.

They Aren't
Looters, They're Needy "Freedom Fighters"

"Presidential
candidate Pat Buchanan calls those who hit the streets `looters and lynchers.'
President Bush calls them criminals. I call them freedom fighters....I not
only accept the rebellions in Los Angeles, I identify with them."
- USA Today contributor Julianne Malveaux in a May 10 San
Francisco Examiner column.

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